“He can run but he can’t hide,” legendary boxer Joe Louis once said about an opponent.
These days, the same thing might be said about the president of the United States.
At a crucial moment of his tenure, Joe Biden is repeatedly refusing to take questions.
The odd ducking and weaving have even the normally docile White House press corps in an uproar.
Why won’t he answer us, they demand to know.
The question answers itself — Biden won‘t face the media because he’s got something to hide.
But as with Joe Louis’ opponents, running won’t work.
For despite Biden’s efforts, day by day, drip by drip, his dirty secret is coming into view.
With each new piece of evidence, it becomes more certain he was directly involved in his family’s influence-peddling schemes.
The latest developments also confirm something else — that elections have consequences.
The GOP victory that gave the party control of the House of Representatives is already producing crucial information that House Dems scandalously kept secret for more than two years.
Even the Department of Justice, supposedly investigating Hunter Biden since at least 2018, apparently wasn’t interested in major evidence hiding in plain sight.
Count all this as an example of how divided government usually works best.
Most important, the probers are doing it in the way made famous by Watergate — following the money.
Consider that a single Republican subpoena to Bank of America yielded key details on how a suspect $3 million payment from a Chinese energy company was divided among Biden family members and associates.
Hunter Biden and Jim Biden, the president’s son and brother, got the lion’s share.
But Hallie Biden, the widow of Joe’s late son Beau and Hunter’s lover, also got $35,000, the first time she is known to have shared in a windfall that might have totaled as much as $11 million, according to investigators.
In the understatement of the year, GOP Rep. James Comer of Kentucky said, “It is unclear what services were provided to obtain this exorbitant amount of money.”
Comer, the aggressive head of the Oversight Committee, has said repeatedly the probe is ultimately about Joe Biden and emphasized the point again on Thursday.
“The Oversight Committee is concerned about the national security implications resulting from President Biden’s family receiving millions of dollars from foreign nationals,” Comer said.
“We will continue to follow the money trail and facts to determine if President Biden is compromised by his family’s business schemes and if there is a national security threat.”
In a sign that Comer hit a nerve, his comments and the revelation about the $3 million rattled both Hunter Biden’s legal team and the White House, with each issuing statements that suggest new levels of desperation.
“Hunter Biden, a private citizen with every right to pursue his own business endeavors, joined several business partners in seeking a joint venture with a privately-owned, legitimate energy company in China,” his spokesperson said, effectively confirming the payments for the first time publicly.
“As part of that joint venture, Hunter received his portion of good faith seed funds he shared with his uncle, James Biden, and Hallie Biden, with whom he was involved with at the time, and sharing expenses.”
The claim that the $3 million, which was sent to Biden associate Rob Walker on March 1, 2017, represented “seed funds” was scoffed at by Tony Bobulinski, the former partner in the venture turned whistleblower.
“It’s absolutely laughable,” Bobulinski told me Friday.
“That money wasn’t seed funds for future work. It was part of the payment for work the Bidens did for the Chinese in 2015 and 2016.”
Indeed, Bobulinski previously said publicly — and told the FBI — that he witnessed Hunter screaming at the Chinese official involved in the joint venture that the Biden family was owed $20 million for work it did for those two years.
The timing distinction is significant because Joe Biden was still vice president in 2015 and 2016.
Also, Bobulinski says he met with Joe Biden in May of 2017, just months after Joe left the White House, and Biden knew all about the China deal.
Take care of the ‘big guy’
It was in that same month that another partner wrote an email saying 10% of the deal was going to the “big guy,” identified by Bobulinski as the current president.
The White House reaction to the disclosures was telling.
Nonresponsive to Comer’s substantive statement, it tried to hide behind politics as usual.
“Instead of bizarrely attacking the President’s family, perhaps House Republicans should focus on working with the President to deliver results for American families on important priorities like lowering costs and strengthening health care,” an aide said.
It was a ridiculous answer and apparently somebody with a brain in the White House realized they couldn’t credibly ignore Comer’s accusations completely.
Unfortunately, their second attempt wasn’t much better even though it involved the president himself issuing a denial.
According to Fox News, Biden was confronted by a reporter Friday on the White House lawn and said simply that the GOP report is “not true.”
That’s it?
That’s all he’s got to say about a $3 million payment to his family and suggestions he’s in China’s pocket and represents a national security threat?
Sorry, Mr. President, but “not true” is not enough.
Not by a long shot.
Biden, of course, is relying on The New York Times and other propaganda media to protect him by denying or downplaying any emerging facts that cut too close to home.
They’ve done that consistently since The Post first broke the story about the incriminating contents of Hunter’s laptop in October 2020.
But that see-no-evil defense has run its course and won’t be able to stop the findings that Comer and others produce by using the subpoena power that comes with having the majority.
Sooner rather than later, Biden is going to have to answer questions from serious, well-informed journalists and attempt to persuade the nation he and his family did nothing wrong.
In America, nobody, not even the president, can run and hide from the truth forever.
Dem & dumber at polls
Reader Donald Kasprzak, former mayor of Plattsburgh, NY, is puzzled over why people are surprised and angry at Albany’s refusal to fix the bail laws it broke.
He writes: “The voters knew what Democrats stand for yet still reelect them each campaign cycle. Shame on the majority of voters.”
Score a job first
Headline: “Study says seeing sporting events in person boosts mental health as much as getting a job!”
Except you have to pay for tickets instead of getting paid and it’s a bummer when your team loses.
Otherwise, sure.
Pass the matzo?
In the spirit of the season, reader Howard Siegel has a question, writing: “As we move toward Passover, I am reminded that my ancestors were slaves unto pharaoh. So where do I line up for reparations?”